1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid discharge apparatus and a liquid discharge system.
2. Related Art
A liquid discharge apparatus is an apparatus that includes a liquid discharge head which can discharge a liquid and discharges various liquids from the liquid discharge head. An ink jet printer that performs recording of an image or the like by discharging a liquid ink from nozzles of the liquid discharge head and landing the ink on a recording medium such as a recording sheet is included in examples of representative liquid discharge apparatus.
The liquid discharge head of the ink jet printer includes a cavity, nozzles communicating with the cavity, and a piezoelectric element that generates a pressure fluctuation on the ink in the cavity. By supplying the drive signal to the piezoelectric element, the piezoelectric element operates and the ink in the cavity is discharged from the nozzles as ink drops.
Because of the configuration as described above, in a case where the drive signal is not supplied to the piezoelectric element during a non-discharge period in which the ink is not discharged, the ink does not convect between the nozzles and the cavity, and thus, the ink in the vicinity of the nozzles is thickened during the non-discharge period.
Therefore, for example, as disclosed in JP-A-2005-280199, a technology is proposed, in which the drive signal is configured to include a drive pulse that discharges the ink and a micro-vibration pulse that micro-vibrating the ink in the vicinity of the nozzles to an extent that the ink is not discharged.
Amplitude or pulse widths of the drive pulse and the micro-vibration pulse described above are set based on an experiment using a standard type ink. The standard type ink is a genuine ink manufactured and managed by the manufacturer of the printer, and the manufacturer grasps the characteristics of the ink. Therefore, the amplitude or the pulse width of the drive pulse and the micro-vibration pulse can be appropriately set.
However, in some cases in a situation of actual use, from a viewpoint of diversification of color expression or the like, an ink other than the genuine ink is used in combination with the genuine ink. For example, in a case of only one color is a fluorescent color, there is a case where the ink of the fluorescent color is the ink other than the genuine ink. In such as case, the amplitude of the micro-vibration pulse wave set based on the genuine ink is not suitable for the ink other the genuine ink. As a result, an image density or the like is unstable in a case of continuous printing. In addition, in a case of performing an intermittent printing in which the printing is performed after a plurality of blank lines, missing of the images or the like has occurred.